US budget crisis looms after health funding cut

Michael Mathes

"If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we are deadbeats": US President Barack Obama. Photo: AP

US Republicans have turned up the political heat by passing a spending plan that withdraws funding for President Barack Obama's healthcare law, a ploy that pushes the government towards shutdown and possible default.

Congress has just nine days to bridge a bitter ideological divide and approve a short-term federal budget before several government agencies and programs shut down at the beginning of the next fiscal year on October 1.

The House of Representatives voted on Friday along party lines 230-189 to fund government operations at current levels until December 15, setting up a showdown with the Democratic-led Senate, which will consider, and almost certainly reject, the measure next week.

The Republican bill includes a provision that strips funding for the healthcare law, which its critics label ''Obamacare'' and which Republicans have fought to repeal since passing more than three years ago.

House Speaker John Boehner, whom Democrats accuse of caving in to extremists in his caucus, insisted the vote reflected Americans' frustration with the healthcare law.

''Our message to the United States Senate is real simple: the American people don't want the government shut down and they don't want Obamacare,'' Mr Boehner said, to loud cheers from Republican members.

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But with both sides insisting they will not blink in the face-off, the nation has careened into fiscal confrontation.

''We really have no idea - no idea - how this is going to play out yet,'' a Republican congressional aide said.

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Mr Obama looked beyond the shutdown threat to a more portentous battle next month, the need to raise the US borrowing limit, which Republicans have also vowed to block unless the healthcare law can be delayed by a year.

The President accused Republicans of risking a ''tailspin'' for the still recovering economy by putting partisan zeal before the good of the nation.

''If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we are deadbeats,'' Mr Obama warned, saying it was ''the height of irresponsibility'' for House Republicans to threaten a government default unless they got their way.